At a press conference Monday, President Donald Trump dismissed Food and Drug Administration warnings about the use of hydroxycloroquine as a preventative treatment for COVID-19, and claimed he's been taking the drug daily for the past several weeks.
Speaking on Boston Public Radio Wednesday, medical ethicist Art Caplan called the president’s claims about ingesting the anti-malarial drug “stupid."
“The only information that’s come out,” he said of hydoxycloroquine, "is [that] it seems to cause heart problems — fibrillation, [a] sort of rapid heart beat, which can be really dangerous [and] could lead to death in older, heavier or obese-type people.”
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The day after the president made his statement, the FDA appeared to soften its position on the matter. In an emailed statement Tuesday, FDA commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said “the decision to take any drug is ultimately a decision between a patient and their doctor.”
Caplan said that sentiment indicated the FDA was “really going in the tank” on behalf of the president.
"If you wanna discourage the use of this stuff,” he said, "the FDA shouldn’t be saying ‘well, talk to your doctor.’ It should be saying [there is] no evidence that it works. There are studies going on, [and] if you’re in a study, that’s the one circumstance you ought to be taking it. Otherwise, it has danger signals around it.”
Arthur Caplan is the Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Chair, and the director of the division of medical ethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
